Destiny's Road

24 The Ridges

In the morning they crossed the ridge and found another valley. They hacked and waded across.

And another behind the next ridge, but Cavorite must have seared and seeded this land. They yelled like maniacs to see green trees and grass covering the slopes. Black and yellow-green ran along the bottom, Destiny life seared away and then returned.

Felons scattered to hunt. Andrew kept others to dig a pit with their hands and to cut Destiny wood with kitchen knives. Jemmy Bloocher and Barda Winslow fought sporadic flurries of rain to make fire.

Before night fell they had cooked a pig, four rabbits, a small bird Ansel caught by leaping at it, and a man's weight of green bananas.

Gorged stupid, the dozen escapees lay on a sloping hill and looked at each other. Andrew Dowd said, “It can work.”

Someone was talking about staying here.

Jemmy could have slept through that if Andrew hadn't begun shouting. Where will the Parole Board look first? where... more speckles? crazy bastard... had a plan...

He tried to ignore the sounds, but now Ansel was shouting back. “Not forever! We stay here till the Board gets bored looking for us.”

Andrew: “I know where the caravan is now! When they get to the Swan we've got to be ready. Merchants won't wait.”

“If we settle here, the Board will quit after a month. They don't know we've got a speckles stash-“

“Speckles rots!”

“What? What are you saying?”

Barda: “Ansel, speckles gets a splash of radiation before it goes on the Road. They do it in the Parole Board complex. Didn't you know?''

“You planned this knowing-? Wait a minute. Andrew, how long does speckles last if nobody zaps it?”

“No idea.”

“You don't even know it's to preserve the speckles, do you? It might be they don't want fertile seeds getting out-”

“That's birdfucking crazy!”

“Who died and made you prole?”

“Shut up! Shut your face or I'll turn it inside out for you!”

Barda was on Andrew's arm, whispering, while Willametta stalked off in a rage.

Jemmy spoke as she passed. “Willya.”

She dropped beside him. She said, “They're all crazy.” Jemmy said, “Sure.”

“Andrew too. Idiot. If he'd just let them talk.” “He still thinks he's a trusty, Willya.”

“What's your take on this, Jeremy?”

Jemmy said, “We had a plan. Then we had another plan. Plans are cheap. I've thrown away a lot of plans. I like-” His arm swept about himself. ”-this. We can hunt!”

“You'd stay?” The ragged clouds permitted glimpses of stars, but it was too dark to see more than shadows. She moved closer, to see his face.

“No, I mean we can keep a restaurant supplied. If they seared this valley, Cavorite must have seared and seeded every valley between here and the Road. They're all ready to be hunted. I saw-”

“Ah.” Relieved, she nestled against him.

He asked, “Does Andrew-?”

“Too many men, not enough women, and a woman who gets pregnant goes free. Any man who tries to hold on to a woman gets taught different.”

“Unless he's a trusty?”

“By that time, he knows.” Somehow they'd come to be lying side by side, their backs against the long damp grass. Willametta said, “I haven't seen stars in two years.”

“Me... well. Days.”

“Be a restaurant. It sounded crazy when you said it.”

“Caravans build a new restaurant every evet~iing, and I was the one who did the building. When I see the Swan I'll tell you what I think. Maybe it's fallen down.”

“What do we do then?”

“I can't stop until I've seen Destiny Town.”

She sat up abruptly. “Crab shies aren't allowed on the mainland,” she said. “You know better than to go into town without an identity, Jeremy.”

Crab shies?

“How would I pick up an identity? What identity? I mean, with this accent.”

“You could be a merchant child.”

Jemmy chewed that. He'd have learned the Crab accent while traveling with the caravan... wait. “Willya, there weren't any children on the caravans.”

“No. Jeremy, if a merchant gets pregnant on the Road, she's bound to be home before she has the baby.”

“Then what are we talking about?”

“Well, merchant men make children along the Road too. The children stay where they're born unless something happens. You could have been picked up at two or three years old.”

“That ever happen?” It sounded like a children's story.

“Ask Duncan Nick. Nicholls.”

“Duncan doesn't have any accent.”

“He lost it.” She rolled over onto him. “You going to talk all night?” He did wonder, afterward, why he had been so favored. But Willya, her breath easing, whispered, “What did you see?”

“When?”

“You said-”

He remembered, and smiled. “I saw green beans growing up cornstalks over most of a hillside, but they're not ripe yet. In a few months we'll get our veggies here too. I've been looking for potatoes. We can bake bananas-“

At dawn the felons were all over the place. Andrew whistled to gather them up.

Winnie was talking to Barda, low and fast.

Barda listened, then summoned Andrew.

The rest straggled in. Winnie looked exhausted already, and two were still missing: Ansel Tarr and Asham Mandala. Andrew looked like bloody murder.

This would be easier, Jemmy thought, if he had bread to offer instead of leftover pork. He said, “They'll catch up. Once we're on the ridge they'll see us. Being seen from the sky is the problem.”

“Always ready to spot the problem, aren't we, Jemmy?”

“Mmm? What am I missing?”

Barda said, “Tell him, Winnie.”

The slender dark woman spoke in a fast monotone. “They wanted me to go with them. Asham had my arms but I bit Ansel's hand and started screaming, I think I kicked him a good one too, and I pulled loose. They wanted me to stop yelling and let them go, and I saw Asham had one of the knives so I just ran back here. But they're gone.”

“And you didn't tell me,” Andrew said venomously.

“We can't wait,” Barda said.

“Barda, they've deserted me!”

Andrew and Barda were still keeping their voices down, though Amnon and Henry had moved into earshot. Jemmy risked saying, “Some of us still think you're the trusties, you know? And some of us have noticed that there aren't any proles to say so. Andrew, when you tell all of us to stop talking about anything but the plan, who is it that stops talking? Just the ones who say you're right, right?”

“Your point?”

“Keep us talking or you'll lose more.”

Andrew sighed. “But if I let these birdfuckers go-”

“Did they get our speckles stash?”

“What? Turn around.”

Jemmy turned. Andrew opened Jemmy's pack and looked in. “Still there. Wait.” He fished the bag out, opened it, looked, sniffed. “Still there. What are you playing at? Did you think they could get it away from you?”

“It was the only thing they could take that's worth anything, and they don't have it. Let them go.”

“No!”

Henry said, “We can't catch them. Earth's sake, would you have chased them in the dark? When they do show up in a few days, speckle sshy and begging for their brains back, they'll be a horrible example."

Andrew snorted. Barda said, “We'll be restaurateurs by then. They'll have to be hidden fast.”

Jemmy saw Andrew bite back his answer. Killed! We're planning a charade, and a speckles-shy might blurt out something deadly. Jemmy looked for alternatives... and Andrew saw his nod.

Ten were left.

Over the ridge was another valley, Destiny rife along the bottom, Earthlife running up the slopes, birds that hovered like hawks. The sky was tattered clouds and fluttery winds that would not support heavy Destiny birds. Those birds must be Earthlife.

Ten felons hunted and feasted on burrowing creatures. It seemed strange to be eating at noon. Merchants and yutzes didn't do that either. Their intestines had forgotten about meat, and some were having trouble. They talked as they lay about the slopes, and continued as they moved on.

“I signed a contract I shouldn't have,” Andrew Dowd said. He was walking off his anger. He walked fast, and Jemmy matched his pace just to see if he could.

“Didn't you say you were being robbed?”

“Robbed, yeah. They were my partners.”

“I had the idea they were holding you at gunpoint.”

Andrew only grinned over his shoulder.

But he'd certainly implied... “Were they trying to kill you?”

“The courts are screwy, Jeremy. I wasn't sure I'd get justice.”

Jemmy dropped back by a little. Andrew was half-smart and dangerous... and maybe his own record was no better.

“I don't remember any of it,” Duncan Nick told Jemmy. “My mother got killed when someone got careless with a weed cutter. My aunt and uncle, they already had Marie. Now Momma was dead and suddenly they've got four, and I didn't look like the others. Daddy already knew about me. When the summer caravan came by, he took me. Carnot wagon. Maria wasn't any too pleased.”

Jemmy guessed: “Your stepmother?” “My older sister.”

“Is that when you saw Mount Canaveral?”

“Oh, I wasn't much past two. Funny I remember anything at all. But I saw Mount Canaveral when some of us went swimming and fishing at Swan Lake, years later. Winslows chased us off.”

“So the restaurant was still going?”

“Then. I was only thirteen.” Duncan looked around him. Barda Winslow was trailing, well out of earshot. “So me and my two friends, we went back to the Swan six years later. But it was empty. So we went through three of the big houses on the Nob and hid out in the Swan. I suppose you'd think I was crazy, a Crab shy forgetting about speckles.”

“I can't imagine it.”

“But I grew up here. Hereabouts, not just in Destiny Town but everywhere, speckles is free. We don't need much. Earthlife animals have nerves too, you know.”

“So?”

“Hey, Willya?”

“What?”

“You told me once. Why is it that we don't have to worry so much about speckles? The Earthlife and Destiny life grow together... ?”

“Yes. Jemmy, these valleys are all Earthlife and Destiny mixed. It's like that around Destiny Town too. Earthlife animals learn to eat Destiny plants that secrete potassium. The ones that don't, get stupid and die. The Crab isn't like that. Nothing's like that unless it's near the Winds. See, the potassium has to be there.”

“Willya, how did caravans get started?”

“Don't know. Lucky for the Crab shies, though, eh?”

Barda thought it over while she walked. “I know some of what's in the lessons,” she said. “A little. Daddy didn't give us much time to learn.”

“But you've got tapes and computers? Like in Spiral Town?”

“Sure. You can't get to them, though. They're in the libraries, and you don't have identification.”

“The caravans-”

“They keep the Crab shies going.”

“Why?”

“Jeremy, you're one yourself.”

“I know, but why? When there were only two hundred of the first settlers and another fifty children, why not move us then?”

Barda walked silent for a bit. Then, “Hell, why not? I never thought of that. But the stories-”

She'd trailed off oddly. Jemmy asked, “What do they say about us?”

“You had to be fed by hand. You were meaner than snakes-I mean your ancestors, of course. Couldn't move you then, I guess, and they tried speckles on a few of you and you must have brightened up. Jemmy, I guess they got tired of you.”

Speckles-shy.

Two hundred adult-sized angry infants who had to be fed, clothed, washed, toilet-trained. The lucky ones who recovered would be more or less ambulatory but no damn use to anyone. Transplanting two hundred Jael Harnesses would be a nightmare.

Jemmy was, he discovered, crying. Destiny Town had the planets, and Spiral Town was left to savagery.

He dropped back so that Barda wouldn't see tears, and he said, “Without speckles we would have died. They must have brought speckles. They could watch us getting well. Why not move us then? Now they have to keep bringing us speckles.”

Barda shook her head. “It's stranger than you think. You talked to Duncan?”

“Yeah.”

“There were only forty in Cavorite, right? And two died early. Now it's two hundred years later, and the merchant women almost always get pregnant on the Road, and the men leave children too. They do it to keep the gene mix. But why go so far? You tell me.”

Now Jemmy could picture the settling mass of extruded mountains pushing the flat land away, until from the sky it would seem to run in parallel wrinkles. They crossed wrinkle after endless wrinkle. At evening they crossed another ridge- And the Road was below.

Heads lined up along the edge of rock, showing nothing more of themselves, looking down.

There was nobody on the Road.

It was another valley, another wrinkle, with another ridge beyond. The Road was one edge of a fast-moving stream lined with Earth-green bushes. Jemmy's view to the right showed no more than Road and river running on, dipping and reappearing, finally curving out of sight.

Left, the ridge ran two or three klicks and then splayed out into a flattopped peak. Andrew whispered, “Where are we, Barda? Is that Canaveral? I've seen pictures. Not from this angle-“

“It's Mount Canaveral,” Duncan Nick said. “The restaurant was just past... it must be half a klick this side, just around that curve. The lake too.”

They spoke without looking at each other, their eyes on the Road. Andrew said, “An hour's walk and it's getting dark. Damn, if anyone saw ten of us sneaking up on an empty building... okay. The rest of you wait here. Stay the night. Barda, it's you and me. Whatever we find down there, you're the owner, or the owner's daughter. I'm your husband-or not yet?”

“Not yet,” she decided. “Lovers, but I want Daddy's approval. You want to meet my parents and it has you a little scared.”

“What if they're not there and someone else is? Do I threaten to call the police?”

“For Earth's sake don't lose your cool until Ido!” Barda hissed.

“Okay.”

“We're too far from anyone else. Daddy kept guns. If it's Daddy... keep your cool.”

“Ready?”

His better judgment told him to be quiet, but Jemmy said, “Not you, Andrew.”

Andrew turned. Jemmy said, “Don't take it wrong, but you look as crazy as a pigeon in a fool cage. Grow some meat over your cheekbones, soften those eye sockets, you could pass. Not now. I'd say Duncan. He's gaunt, but at least he knows the Swan.”

Barda Winslow looked at the men and women lined up along the rock crest. They waited her judgment.

She said, “You, Jemmy.”

There was nobody in sight. They scrambled down to the Road. Jemmy looked at the fast-moving water. He asked, “Can you swim?”

“There's a bridge. Now we just walk, right? A little tired. We've been swimming.”

“Where are our towels?”

In the pack?” “Good.”

“Now, you might see a bus go by.”

“Bus?”

“If you see a box full of people being pulled by a tug, and they're looking out the windows at you, just look back. I'll wave it on.”

“Tug?”

“Tractor. Pulling machine. You see them a lot. Back at the Windfarm, that was a tug pulling the speckles cart.”

Oh, that was a tug. “A flat metal thing that hugs the ground? Hip high. The top is Begley cloth?”

Barda nodded.

The light had faded to a silver circle above the west: Quicksilver light blurred by haze.

The bridge was wood. It wasn't in good shape, with only one handrail, and it shook as they crossed.

The Swan loomed, a lightless shadow against a hillside, twice the size of Bloocher Farm. Brenda's jittery voice led him toward it. “That bridge will need some serious repair. Place hasn't collapsed; good. What do you think, go in the front?”

“Is there a bell? Bloocher Farm had a bell.”

The front door was twice a man's height. Barda waved her arms about. “The bell rope's gone. I think Daddy's gone too, and he took the bell. Daddy, it's Barda!”

They listened. Barda whispered, “No lights. The sign is out. You don't close an inn at night. You just charge higher if they wake you up. Daddy, it's Barda! I've brought a-“ A nice hesitation. ”-friend!”

Nothing.

Barda pulled and pushed the door. “Locked. Come on around.”

The kitchen door was lower and wider, wide enough to pass a cart. Barda pulled and it swung open. “The lock's broken.”

Jemmy suggested: “Duncan?”

“Sure. Well, come in. Here.” She hooked her fingers into his waistband and led him. There was nothing else to guide him, but Barda moved by memory and scent.

“Not even night-lights. Daddy must have taken the guide spot with him. Kitchen,” she said, and he smelled old food smells and smoke.

“Dining hall. Wow, he took the tables and chairs too, and the carts. Stairs here. Watch it! There was a banister. Stay along the wall.” And, “These were the guest rooms.”

“Sounds good to me.”

But she kept moving, down to the end and another flight of stairs. Then a strange smell, flowery-“My room. Watch your feet.”

He'd kicked something. “What's that?”

“Don't know. Clutter. We'll have to sleep on the floor.”

“No wind? No rain? And they left us a rug. I like it.”